A Sense of Death

Food is bland, and my drink has no flavor;

The taste of death has come to me.

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls,” said John Donne;

The sound of death has come to me.

I dread the wrinkled face in my mirror;

The look of death has come to me.

I smell the odor of my aging flesh;

The smell of death has come to me.

The pain in my bones, my back, and my head,

The touch of death has come to me.